Rick Perry: White House holding states 'hostage' with Medicaid expansion

Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued his most forceful rejection yet of the health law’s massive Medicaid expansion, calling it a “fool’s errand” and promising that governors in pro-expansion states would regret their support.

“Texas will not be held hostage to the Obama administration’s attempt to force us into this fool’s errand,” he said, flanked by Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and Reps. Joe Barton and Michael Burgess.

Text Size

-

+

reset

Perry at CPAC 2013

Also in attendance was Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who compared Medicaid expansion with a drug addict taking his first hit and never being able to kick the habit.

Perry’s comments are a direct rejection of a recent movement among Republican governors in support of Medicaid expansion. Those governors have argued that expansion would provide an economic windfall for their states, offer basic health coverage to the most vulnerable and prop up struggling hospitals.

“They will come to rue the day because Medicaid will take a larger and larger share of their state budgets,” Perry said.

Perry did note that Texas’s uninsured rate — nearly a quarter of its population — will fall significantly when Obamacare’s insurance exchange goes online next year, but he chalked that up to a win for the private market.

“Substantially larger numbers … will be covered with private insurance because of the federal exchange that will be put into place,” he said.

But Perry mostly stuck to his harsh rejection of the health law. He cited the recent release by the Obama administration of detainees suspected of illegal immigration due to budget cuts as proof that the White House wouldn’t live up to its promise to fund Medicaid expansion for the long term.

“It was federally sponsored jailbreak that betrayed the most fundamental promise any government makes its citizens,” he said.

Throughout the remarks, protesters demanding the expansion of Medicaid echoed in the background from outside Perry’s office, repeatedly drawing the attention of participants in the press conference.

“The fact is we share a common goal. We want to save Texas Medicaid,” Cornyn said.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 1:02 p.m. on April 1, 2013.